After the National Award winning Shahid, based on the life of the slain activist lawyer Shahid Azmi, and the under-production Aligarh inspired by a trials of a gay university professor, Hansal Mehta who has always drawn stories from real life and made national figures of local heroes, will soon start work on an official biopic of Sarabjit Singh. It revolves around his relationship with his sister, Dalbir Kaur, who spent most of her life fighting to free her brother from a Pakistani jail. While they are still looking for an actor to play Sarabjit, Kangana Ranaut has been approached to play his sister.

Sarabjit was a farmer in Punjab, who had strayed across the border in 1990, three months after a series of bomb blasts in Lahore and Faisalabad. The Indian national was convicted of terrorism and spying for RAW by the Supreme Court of Pakistan and sentenced to death. His sister and family campaigned for his release with the Indian government and on June 26, 2012, the media reported that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari had commuted his sentence to life in prison, which is 14 years. Since he had already served 22 years, he was to be released. However, five hours later, the Pakistani government announced that Surjeet Singh, another Indian national and not Sarabjit Singh will be released.

The mercy petitions continued but in April 2013, Sarabjit was attacked in prison. On 29 April 2013, India appealed to Pakistan to release him on humanitarian grounds or at least allow him to be provided medical treatment in India, but Pakistan rejected these pleas. On 1 May 2013 he was declared brain dead by doctors and his sister and family returned to India harbouring suspicions of foul play. His body was brought to India by a special aircraft where Indian doctors claimed that the second postmortem revealed that vital organs were missing from his body and that his skull was broken into two pieces.

The news of his death created a national furore and his sister's struggle to free her brother captured the nation's imagination. And Hansal's too. The filmmaker's spokesperson said: “Yes, Hansal has met and spoken to Kangana. An official announcement will be made when things are finalised.“

Kangana told Mirror that she was really impressed with Hansal's script. “The role spans 16-46 years and is a challenge in itself. I myself share a really close bond with my siblings. Rangoli is around four years older than me but there's just a gap of a year-and-a-half between me and my younger brother who is a pilot. We've grown up eating from each other's plates so I can completely empathise with the relationship Dalbir and Sarabjit shared.“